Creation of terrain textures

[USRanger]

Happy dance!!

[bustr]

The skys not falling....

So far, all we've done is a pac tree set  and a european tree set. we only have terrsets 0-3 right now.
If you guys are bored, you can go here and browse: https://store.speedtree.com/product-category/visual_effects/trees-v6/

If you want, it would be nice to have a list of about 5-6 tree types for different terrains / season. Ill let the botanist side of you guys pick out trees for terrains. Ex: North Africa / Mediterranean, Europe winter, ect.... Just call it a wishlist for now as we are busy on other things, but we do plan on having other terrsets

Looks like some of the tree packages have snow covered variations. Package's run $19.00 - $49.00.

If these guys go nutz with terrain clutter and trees, only the 12 guys with Godzilla class PC will be able to play on their terrains. But, they will be 12 very happy guys. I remember the very closely packed trees on one of the early NDisles tests. It looked like a real forest, and a tank would disappear by the 3rd row of trees into a clump. I watched guys from the air ambush each other by turning off their engine and sitting 600yds away 3 trees deep. Even with me on VOX telling them exactly where the hidden tank was in the trees, they never saw it. Many times once a tank got into the middle of the trees, you could no longer find it from the air. Now for playability FPS, the forest density has been cut way back and you need to hide behind buildings.

[USRanger]

No worries.  We take fps seriously.  No point in making a terrain if most can't use it.  That's what's great about only having a mid/lower range pc to build & test on.   The plan, at least for terrains we are making for the AvA, is to use the ground texture to help simulate thick woods from the air, instead of packing it full of trees.

[bustr]

If you have a tank only map, thickening the forests will become a GVer's wonderland of possibilities. They will have to turn off clutter and possibly post lighting. But, the forest thickness is the magic.

Back in the old closed alpha, once stampf was on the ground in his tank at TT in the thick forests. We could never get him and other testers to up in planes to help us test the closed alpha. They played GV in the realistic thick forest all the time. I had to carpet bomb them with lancs to get them to test the alpha. It was the only way I had any chance of hitting them because of the trees. Using an IL2 or a Hurri bomber was useless once they got nestled in.

[Easyscor]

Wait, I'm confused, which is it? Do you want more trees or less?

 

[Chilli]

Easycor,

This is just conversation, but I have a similar impression about having separate ground and air war arenas.  The most fantasy full idea would be connected by base capture, basically the fantasy would be the ability to "spawn" into an entirely different "ground or air challenge" arena from the current arena.

Bustr is simply saying that when there were more trees, it was very much a ground war utopia.  No one wants the ground war to "ground" any potential pilots due to the cost in their video resources.  The air war should always take top consideration, and a separate arena concept may allow the best of both to co exist on the servers.

[Easyscor]

Maybe, but that doesn't describe an Aces High I'd want to play.

[Chilli]

Not really a well thought out fantasy anyway...... but it might end some of the bickering  back and forth on country about who is doing what....... or not doing.....

[USRanger]

The skys not falling....

So far, all we've done is a pac tree set  and a european tree set. we only have terrsets 0-3 right now.
If you guys are bored, you can go here and browse: https://store.speedtree.com/product-category/visual_effects/trees-v6/

If you want, it would be nice to have a list of about 5-6 tree types for different terrains / season. Ill let the botanist side of you guys pick out trees for terrains. Ex: North Africa / Mediterranean, Europe winter, ect.... Just call it a wishlist for now as we are busy on other things, but we do plan on having other terrsets

May I submit choices here?  I figure three tree types for two different environments, desert (covering N. Africa & Middle East needs) and winter to cover Europe & Russian (both as best as possible with 3 tree types).

[Easyscor]

We definitely need a winter set. Two unless there are enough tree varieties to cover everything from Finland to Stalingrad.

I agree on the Desert set as well. Then there might be a preconfigured Mediterranean set, but we could probably create one combining the PTO set and a desert set.

I made one pass at the OE Friday afternoon and now I'm afraid to touch either the TE or OE until the next patch but I did take a short tour. I looked at one of the birch tree. I'm looking forward to spending more time with the OE.

[ghostdancer]

Working on converting a AH2 winter terrain to AH3 right now. So a few questions to just see if I understand things right.

Currently there are only 4 tilesets:

- Europe Summer
- Mediterrean / Desert
- Pacific Summer
- WWI Summer

In AH2 you could override the default texture files in a terrain by adding your own BMP in the txtsrc directory of your terrain. Is that still the case? So that if I drop in BMPs in the texsrc directory with the same names of the default textures that they will use those instead of say the Europe Summer texture BMP just like back in AH2. Is this still the case with AH3?

Just asking because I haven't gotten to testing that yet and instead am wrapped up with other areas of terrains and AH2 to AH3 terrain conversion.

[hitech]

Working on converting a AH2 winter terrain to AH3 right now. So a few questions to just see if I understand things right.

Currently there are only 4 tilesets:

- Europe Summer
- Mediterrean / Desert
- Pacific Summer
- WWI Summer

In AH2 you could override the default texture files in a terrain by adding your own BMP in the txtsrc directory of your terrain. Is that still the case? So that if I drop in BMPs in the texsrc directory with the same names of the default textures that they will use those instead of say the Europe Summer texture BMP just like back in AH2. Is this still the case with AH3?

Just asking because I haven't gotten to testing that yet and instead am wrapped up with other areas of terrains and AH2 to AH3 terrain conversion.

Yes you can build your own texture sets in the terrain but it is a more evolved process now.

See this thread for the documentation.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,376440.msg5034382.html#msg5034382

And this thread for some sample texture sets.

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,370041.0.html

HiTech